Quote:
Originally Posted by flamesfever
You're just a kid...I'm 87.
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Well you're definitely my senior, so all be it for me to lecture you on life, but
I'll say, we all had a lot of good laughs at your expense last time. Because there is a seeming lack of consequential thinking in a lot of your statements. Generally they boil down to "the world should be the way that makes me feel comfortable", which really doesn't consider that a world structured that way may leave others uncomfortable, and if they take the same approach to political discourse that the two of you will be irreconcilably separated in your views, leaving you unable to participate in common (which is what the whole project of nation state democracy is).
On the other hand, I think you just need some empathy with where you are coming from. Have there been instances of people leveraging some form of minority status for advantage? almost certainly yes. But it is still measurably far below the advantages many others have taken from having non minority statuses.
From an Ideal prospective, I agree explicitly promoting someone on the basis of race is not where we want to be. But we are a long way from an ideal world, and we might need to let some people who just wont get the opportunity otherwise step up.
*I do explicitly believe that were my language skills / race / sex different I'd have reached the position I am in, in my career 3-5 years sooner, just given how slow things seemingly moved at times, and the rhetoric of my company. But I also think that doesn't mean I did not have the opportunity to get there, I think there are things I could have done to be better to get there sooner, and it's possible achieve that success earlier could have left me in a different place entirely, probably better, but maybe worse. Sometimes I'm annoyed by it, but I myself had to take accountability, pull myself up by the bootstraps, and get myself there, in spite of a seeming preference for diversifying demographics. **I also don't know for a fact that it is true. This is just me reflecting on myself within the conservative frame. It's not that other people needed to pull themselves up, but I needed to, an internal locus of control is really important to not blame others for your problems. (yes understand the hypocrisy of me telling you not to blame others, when you feel like they are taking every opportunity to blame people like you, but you can only control yourself)
I think it's fair for people to at least show you understanding, but they need you to reciprocate and understand that you are opining for a society that works worse for 65% of people in favor of 35%.